This invention relates to a submerged arc welding gun, and in particular, to an improvement therein which permits use of the gun in a horizontal position during the welding process.
The use of the submerged arc welding process to weld metallic pieces in various industrial applications has become quite prevalent in recent years. Heretofore, one of the drawbacks to increased utilization of the submerged arc welding process, has been the need to maintain the welding gun in a generally vertical position during the welding process. The vertical prositioning of the gun during the welding process has been necessitated because the flux employed in the submerged arc welding process has been fed through the gun, at least partially by gravity.
Since gravity has been used to feed the flux through the welding gun, the gun could not be placed in a horizontal position during the welding process as this would prevent proper feeding of the flux.
Even though, in some instances, the flux has been partially fed through the gun under pressure, such pressurized feeding of the flux has not obviated the use of gravitational forces to feed the flux to the nozzle of the welding gun.